Michael Bolton was before my time. I know this because Office Space had a character who was ashamed to share a name with him, and because half the laughs for his surprise appearance in SNL's "Jack Sparrow" skit were Because It's Him, and because I haven't actually heard any of his own music. I think it's supposed to be bad, which I assumed was because it's "soft rock" (can you believe those words were once combined?) or sappy, but a quick YouTube lesson reveals it to also have a Pat Boone component. I didn't know he sang R&B, and not just any R&B--his first hit was 1988's "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay," and he added a hair metal guitar solo. (Sidebar: he didn't "steal the real artists' money," guys. His bland middle-age fans never would've bought Otis Redding records in the first place. They're buying for the whiteness. Anyway.)

R&B is back or whatever, and "Jack Sparrow" revealed him to have that marketable Healthy Sense of Humor (a la Wilson Phillips in Bridesmaids), so naturally he's making a move for '10s legitimacy with his new Ain't No Mountain High Enough: A Tribute to Hitsville, a Motown covers album. I'm now going to listen to it right now without...what did George Michael call it?...prejudice.

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By Brittany Spanos

At what point did teen girls suddenly just become wrong? "Serious" music fans have little patience for any artist who willingly sells to the rabid teen girl market. It's why we non-teen-girls only divulge our love for Justin Bieber and One Direction with a "self-aware" laugh.

See also: Beliebers on One Direction: "They're Nothing"

But with last year's Believe, Justin has grown up into an artist that's on his way to Justin Timberlake levels of pop/R&B maturity. Give him a few more years and scandals -- pregnancy scares/rumors, pot experiments, breakups, public mea culpas -- and his sweet and earnest teen image will be permanently dissolved. For now, Bieber has proven to be an enthralling act to watch live, with his versatile talents in both dance and song.

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Timothy Norris

No photos of Gaga allowed, but here are some of her fans

Lady Gaga
Staples Center
1/20/13

The artist formerly known as Stefani Germanotta has kept herself in the news for her duds, her work with the GLBT community and now her feud with Kelly Osbourne. Also, she's quite devoted to her fans, and last night at Staples Center entertained those Little Monsters with a two and a half hour show that mixed extravagance with carefully crafted pop anthems. Backed by a gigantic three-story castle that folded and moved along with a revolving troupe of dancers, the singer mixed the peculiar with the bizarre. Her narrative, however, was a bit hard to follow.

See also: Our slideshow of Lady Gaga's Little Monsters attending the concert

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Timothy Norris

No Doubt
Gibson Amphitheatre
11/24/12

Better than...most karaoke versions of "Just A Girl."

See also: *Our slideshow of the concert and fans
*We Ask a Designer Why No Doubt's New Record Cover Sucks So Hard

On Saturday night No Doubt returned to Los Angeles for the first time in three years to perform their first collection of new songs since 2001. Though the wait for Push and Shove was slowly creeping into Chinese Democracy territory, Gwen Stefani and company reminded 6,000-plus that they haven't lost their ability to appeal to the masses.

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Leigh Righton

Esthero, the local chanteuse with Toronto roots, emerged in the late 1990s and has collaborated with the likes of DJ Krush, Ian Pooley and Kanye West. Her solo oeuvre includes everything from trip-hop to country, all with pop sensibilities and a unique vocal register (not to be confused with Nelly Furtado).

Her new album, Everything Is Expensive, out today, is an experiment in crowdsourced pledging, wherein fans can offer different levels of support.

We spoke with her on a recent rainy Thursday at the Bourgeois Pig in Hollywood.

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Like any girl who came of age in the early 90s, we knew some basic facts on the New Kids on the Block.

We knew Donnie was the leader; Joey and Jordan, the cute ones, and the lead singers; Jon, the shy, sensitive one; Danny, the one who looked like a monkey. We knew that our best friend in grade school was utterly convinced she was going to marry Jordan. And we knew that when the New Kids, now known by the acronym NKOTB, made their triumphant return four years ago, a surprising number of our friends bought tickets and shrieked all the way through the show.

So maybe those friends -- the diehard fans -- knew everything there was to know about the band already. But for those of us who just knew the basics, Nikki Van Noy's new authorized biography, New Kids on the Block: Five Brothers and a Million Sisters, contains a surprising number of revelations about the boy band that practically invented the genre, at least for white folks. Here are the ten we found most surprising.

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Timothy Norris

Madonna
Staples Center
10/11/12

Better than: Pop music's current Madonna-wannabe starlets.

See also: Our slideshow of Madonna at the Staples Center last night

Madonna's MDNA tour is a mostly-dark assault to the senses, and many have focused on its controversial themes, words and antics. At Staples Center last night, we were looking at the bigger picture: No one in pop music comes close to Madonna's spectacle, her unbridled physicality on stage or her arsenal of hits. And no one better plays the sexy provocateur, even three decades on.

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New Zealand-born singer Kimbra's voice might sound familiar -- she was featured on Australian singer-songwriter Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know," now the third-best selling Australian single of all time.

But she's also making tracks of her own, with her American debut, Vows, debuting at #14 upon its May release, and her April show at the Troubadour selling out in 45 seconds. Tomorrow and Friday she's performing at the Fonda Theater. We spoke with her about big labels, big collaborations, and tampons.

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Tristan Prettyman looks out over the East Hollywood landscape from the top floor of the Capitol Records building. The San Diego county resident spent the day doing press and has a label showcase later tonight at the Troubadour. In two weeks, she leaves for a cross-country tour supporting Joshua Radin. But at the moment she's crying.

"The minute that the breakup happened, all these songs started coming out," says an emotional Prettyman, referring to the tracks on her latest album, Cedar + Gold. Following a very public split from sugarcoated surf-popper Jason Mraz last year (they were engaged), she channeled her heartbreak into her latest offering. The album itself moves away from the "surfer girl" aesthetic of her previous records and into darker, more mature territory. It shows in songs such as "I Was Gonna Marry You," a self-explanatory kiss-off to Mraz, and "Glass Jar," a raw account of the moment Mraz proposed to her.

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